


fear him not

by redcigar



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: (not that kind of bear), AU: The Legend of Tam Lin, Ballad 39: Tam Lin, Fairy Tale Curses, Fairy Tale Retellings, M/M, Romance, jaskier hugs a bear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:27:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28038417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcigar/pseuds/redcigar
Summary: What Jaskier wanted, what Jaskier needed – was a fairytale.So of course when he sat down next to a finely dressed gentleman one evening in a bustling tavern in Toussaint and overhead the words “haunted”, “magical” and “guaranteed death to any damned fool that goes wandering near that damned place,” he knew it was a sign.“Say,” he said, pushing a fresh mug of ale across the table to the aforementioned gentleman, “What were you talking about just now?”
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, jaskier geralt
Comments: 35
Kudos: 237





	fear him not

The problem with graduating from Oxenfurt Academy and its seven liberal arts, Jaskier was eventually forced to conclude, was that nobody in his family wanted to hear a damned thing about Oxenfurt Academy and its seven liberal arts.

As soon as Jaskier had returned victoriously home his mother was holding a veritable funeral for her ideal of a son, who had traipsed off to school to be a respectable lawyer and had returned with a battered lute and five different songs featuring a young maiden and her misplaced rooster. His sister’s eyes glazed over when Jaskier had earnestly tried to detail to her the _quadrivium_ and _trivium,_ and the many nuances between grammar and rhetoric, and how he hadn’t actually passed that well in geometry and astronomy but did you hear about his marks in music…? And his father the Viscount, bless his rotted soul, had simply lifted his gout-ridden feet onto his footstool and complained that his son might have become a damned physician, at _least_ , and be put to some honest work.

So instead, after a month of _tsk_ ing and _tut_ ing, Jaskier took to the road.

And the world! Oh, the world! With all its colours and vibrancy and heartache and joy, with its many wonderful, terrible people! Jaskier spent his time in stables and inns, with noblemen and cheese mongers, and he wrote songs and small ditties and wiled away the time until some truly great ballad saw fit to plant its seeds in him. And he had plenty of chances, of course. One didn’t tread foot in the marshy miserable towns of Redania or the green sloping farmlands of Temeria without a story or two making itself known. But most of them were small tales, meant for riddles and jokes, stories to make the commonfolk laugh and nod their heads in recognition of the middling foibles of their lives.

What Jaskier wanted, what Jaskier _needed_ – was a _fairytale_.

So of course when he sat down next to a finely dressed gentleman one evening in a bustling tavern in Toussaint and overhead the words “haunted”, “magical” and “guaranteed death to any damned fool that goes wandering near that damned place,” he knew it was a sign.

“Say,” he said, pushing a fresh mug of ale across the table to the aforementioned gentleman, “What were you talking about just now?”

***

The man had told Jaskier of an abandoned manor riddled with curses, fallen to disrepair and darkness, where unfortunate merchants and travelers had wandered too close and never been seen again. He had also looked Jaskier up and down, at his disheveled boyish hair and his emerald green doublet (fashionably slashed with gold, as was the style as Jaskier understood it), and said maybe Jaskier should head into town instead.

Well, no. He had asked Jaskier if he was a fucking idiot, which Jaskier took issue with, as he had very nicely just bought the man a very bad ale.

But after some needling and prodding, Jaskier had wheedled out the infamous manors location, and after a good night’s rest and a well-earned breakfast, made his way into the woods with his trusty lute and a heart full of promise.

The man had mentioned rusted old gates, an empty courtyard, and shuttered windows.

What the man had _not_ mentioned, was the roses. 

They were everywhere. Not in the way that roses normally grow everywhere when left unattended in the wild, but everywhere in the sense as if a very large giant had been carrying a bouquet of them as he passed the manor and then dropped them all at once in a heap. It was a red velvet carpet of roses, almost hip height to Jaskier, and they coated the courtyard and the manor roof, spilled haphazardly over the eaves and the buttresses, ringed the stone walls and choked the iron gates. Jaskier’s eyes burned with the vivid red. The perfume was almost overpowering, clotting his nostrils. He stood frozen at the open gates for a moment. Silence was all about him.

“Manor,” he announced bravely, planting his fists on his waist, “I have come to sing about you!”

The manor, characteristically, did not respond.

“That’s what I thought,” Jaskier agreed. “I don’t suppose you have any ghosts you’d like to announce to me. Fairies? Wizards? _Witches_?” He paused expectantly. He had yet to meet a witch, or even a fabled sorceress, but he heard they were _fantastic_ … conversationalists.

If Jaskier was anything, it was perpetually optimistic.

“Alternatively,” he added, “if you have any designs on my life, or the immediate ending thereof, I shall be very disappointed.”

Yet more silence. The stench of roses was almost vile in its sweetness.

“Right,” said Jaskier, more quietly, and slowly entered the courtyard. He had to step into the roses to do so, great big lunging steps that made him wince every time his boots _crunched_ on delicate petals or snapped delicate stems. At the center of a courtyard was an empty stone fountain, and he made a seat of it when he finally reached it, unslinging this lute from his back, and taking in his vibrant surroundings with some satisfaction. His boots were damp with dew and coated to the knee in red. It almost looked like blood.

“This was an excellent idea,” Jaskier announced, and settled down to wait.

***

An engraving on the stone fountain called the manor _Carterhaugh_. Jaskier thought it should be renamed _Boring_ Hall. Eerie plant life aside, not much had occurred in the some hours he had been there except for the passing of the sun, which had moved from directly above him to behind the manor’s peak, so that the courtyard was drenched in a sudden dismal cold, adding misery to Jaskier’s already souring mood. He had plucked at some tunes in practice, but one could only rhyme _rose_ with _morose_ so many times before one considered death. It was still silent all around. Not even birds passed overhead. Jaskier thought he heard the distant whinny of a horse, but after straining his ears a bit, it did not come again.

So instead he filled the silence with his voice. He sang of the poor milkmaid and her missing cock, of the cuckholding husband and his wayward wife. He sang of young love, of old love, of misguided love. He sang of marriage and divorce, kings and queens, princesses, and dragons.

He sang of boring manors and boring roses and boring, boring –

And when the sun dropped down over the last of the distant trees, he sung into a screech when a pale hand emerged from the roses beside the fountain and seized him by the leg.

“Good evening!” He shouted frantically, his other leg up on the stone as he attempted to rapidly scale it for safely. “Terribly sorry to intrude! Are you dead? You seem dead! Hello?”

The pale hand, which was unrelenting in its grip, was attached to a pale arm, which appeared more fully from the roses as a pale torso appeared, as if from the red and the earth, and finally, a man. The sight of him quelled Jaskier to silence. His hair was white as snow, his face like carved marble, his chest was –

“The question as to your corpseness has become rather important right now,” babbled Jaskier, “to my soul. Hello, can you hear me?”

“Stop.”

The voice was hoarse and disused. When the man opened his eyes, they were yellow like a cat’s.

“Oh thank the Gods, you’re alive,” said Jaskier, “here, let me help you,” but when he stuck an arm under the man’s to bring him fully out of the roses and to his feet, he found himself seized by a second hand, and the man’s face was sour and cold.

“Stop.” He said again, and then cleared his throat roughly, shaking his head as if dislodging something unpleasant.

“Stop?”

“Singing.” The man finally found his feet, and rose to his full height, which, Jaskier noted somewhat satisfactorily, was not much different to his. “Stop. Singing.”

The man, Jaskier noted, was also entirely nude.

“Cock,” he said, and then “Hello, I’m Jaskier, please tell me your name _immediately_.”

But instead of doing that, the stranger simply looked up and around him, and then at Jaskier, squinting doubtfully at his outfit and at the lute, discarded on the fountain beside him.

“What are you doing here.”

“I feel like that should have been a question,” said Jaskier, and then, seizing the opportunity, thrust his shoulders back and announced, “I’m here to write the greatest ballad the world has ever known! And you, good Sir, are going to be the _star._ ”

The man squinted at him again. He was very good at squinting, Jaskier noted.

“So,” he pushed on, making a show of seating himself against the stone and determinedly not looking at the certain body parts that it put him at eye level with, “tell me _everything_ , oh glorious man from the roses red. Who are you? Where are you? _Why_ are you,” he began scrounging in his pack for his book and quill, “you don’t look like an elf, I suppose, not that, ah,” he paused when the stranger raised an eyebrow, “I’ve met many elves, but your ears aren’t, I suppose that is to say, they’re not very…”

The man really was good at squinting. The effect was slightly deflated by the loose rose petals in his hair.

“I’m not an elf.” He said eventually, like speaking with a mouth full of glass. “What year is it.”

“Not an elf, then! A ghost? You’re very corporeal for a spirit. If you were a wraith, I imagine you would be a lot more murderous, but I suppose you… what year?” Jaskier paused in his writing about alabaster skin and scars like constellations and stared up at his new companion. “You don’t know what year it is?”

“Where’s my horse,” the man asked next, as if not listening to him. He was patting himself down and frowning distractingly when he found he was nude. “Where’s Roach. My _swords…_ ”

He turned to look around them, and Jaskier saw a great many scars on his back, knotted and torn like a patchwork quilt. Finally, he stopped writing, and the reality of the situation seemed to come upon him all at once.

“What _happened_ to you?” He wondered out loud. “What happened to your back?”

“My back?” Said the man. “What’s wrong with it.”

“What’s _right_ with it? It’s covered in scars! You look like you’ve gone through a grain mill!”

“Ah,” the man said, satisfied, nodding, “that’s all. That’s normal. Where are my pants?”

“ _Melitele_ ,” Jaskier swore, slamming his book closed, “ _what’s your name_?”

Yellow eyes blinked at him, nonplussed.

The man opened his mouth to speak.

And the courtyard went dark.

***

Jaskier awoke some several hundred yards away, by the main road, with a child standing over him and poking him with a stick.

“Blast,” he said, and the child ran screaming down the lane.

Several hours later he was bathed and fed and sitting at the largest table in the inn while the flustered innkeep’s wife ladled soup into his bowl.

“No-one has ever come back alive before,” she was saying, while the inns other patrons sat crowded around Jaskier and nodded their heads solemnly, “Carterhaugh is a damned place, has been for hundreds of years. So many noble knights and lords have headed in to slay whatever creature cursed the lot, claim it back for the Duchess, but none have ever returned.”

“They probably needed hedgeclippers,” said Jaskier helpfully.

“Great knights,” a village man sighed, shaking his head, “Noble men, all.”

“I only saw one man,” said Jaskier, “and he was mostly naked and grumpy, to be honest. What exactly did you say was haunting the place, anyway? I didn’t see anything particularly _evil_ , to be honest. Unless you count wayward horticulture as a manifestation of maleficence.”

The townsman mouthed ‘manifestation of maleficence’ to himself very slowly. The innkeep’s wife propped her behind up against the edge of the table, quite close to Jaskier’s outspread arm. She leaned in close, and Jaskier tipped his head back appreciatively.

“Nobody knows for sure,” she admitted, hushed, “all we know is it’s _old_. No ghostly cries, no mutilated corpses, nothing the likes of which we’re used to in the outskirts, grizzly ghouls, and the like. Just a place where people go missing, where people have always gone missing, as long as anyone of us can remember.”

Behind the bar, the innkeep clapped some mugs together loudly as he gathered them into his hands, and his wife jumped up to her feet.

“They even sent a Witcher,” he grunted at Jaskier, drying his hands, and sending his wife a _look_ , “when my father’s father was but a boy. Big scary son of a bitch, like they all are. Set off with his swords and his horse and never came back. The Duchess stopped sending people, after that.”

“A _Witcher_ ,” Jaskier breathed. He had yet to meet one himself, which as he understood was much the way of things since the dissolution of the Schools, but he still had hope he would enter some rural pub one lonely rainy day and find some mysterious shadow in a corner to inspire him.

“Take my advice, boy,” the innkeep continued, approaching Jaskier and laying a big hand on his shoulder. When he squeezed it tight, his smile was not exactly kind, “you’ve done the impossible, spared a needless death. Don’t go back to that place. Go into the city, sing to the crowds. Sing about Carterhaugh if you wish, but don’t go back again.”

Jaskier nodded solemnly at him.

“I won’t,” he said, and held out his empty tankard for some more ale.

***

“Hello!” Jaskier cried into the courtyard of Carterhaugh the following day, reaching up on his tiptoes to look over the curtain of roses, somehow more oppressive than they were the day before. “Hello--!”

The manor was quiet. Undaunted, Jaskier charged once more into the roses, wincing with every snap and crunch, until once again he came upon the fountain and made a seat. He peered this way and that, but everything was much the same as it was. He poked his lute deep into the roses where the man had emerged but hit nothing but soil. So, relenting, his lifted his boots – red with the corpses of many unfortunate roses – and folded his legs on the edge of the fountain, slinging his lute once more into his lap.

Keeping an eye on the bed of roses, he sang again. He thought maybe the strangers protestations had been to the _type_ of songs he had been singing, so this time he sang of war and battle, victorious kings and noble queens, victory and defeat… with two or three renditions of the young herd girl and her untimely confusion between her beloved and his twin brother, for flavour. This received no response. He sang of journeys far and wide, roaming distant lands and meeting distant people, towering mountains, and roaring oceans, he sang of things he had never seen. A distant chill passed through the courtyard. Jaskier sang until his voice was hoarse and he could not sing anymore, until the sun passed once more down the other side of the manor, and then he fell quiet.

The courtyard, too, was quiet.

Then came a shuffling of earth and the snapping of stems, and white hands emerged from the earth once more.

“Ha!” Jaskier crowed victoriously, setting his lute aside so that he could stand and help heave the man out. He came in an explosion of soil and roses, coughing and shaking his head, so that petals fell upon his silver tresses most romantically, or at least Jaskier thought. At least until the man shook himself hard, like a dog, and sneezed violently.

“Fuck,” he rasped, peering through soily eyelashes at Jaskier with begrudging suspicion. “You again.”

“Jaskier,” said Jaskier, “at your service. Have a seat?”

Now the man appeared to notice Jaskier’s quarry, beside his satchel and his lute – a bottle of wine and two small cups. Not the _best_ wine, Jaskier admitted, but he doubted men who went about sleeping under rose gardens in abandoned haunted manors had room to be picky about those sorts of things. At the very least Jaskier had his attention, and he looked more confused than outright hostel, so Jaskier counted it as a victory, if only a small one.

“The year,” he continued amiably, pouring the drinks out, “is 1251, to answer your question, by the way.”

“1251.” Said the man dully.

“As for your pants, I’m afraid I’m unsure. I would have brought you some, but that would have required asking them to be made in the village, and _that_ would require getting your measurements. And let me just say,” Jaskier sat on the fountain, folding his legs up again, “the people there are _very_ concerned with people coming around here, so I would rather avoid any uncomfortable questions, if you know what I mean.”

“1251.” Said the man again. And then, “my horse.”

Jaskier sucked his teeth sympathetically.

They shared a moment of silence, and then the man trod noisily through the roses, and took a seat on the fountain.

“I’ll have some wine,” he said.

“That’s the spirit,” Jaskier agreed, passing over the cup. “Speaking of spirits, I don’t suppose you could clarify that part for me?”

“What?”

“Are you, you know,” Jaskier made a hand movement that he hoped conveyed _deceased, departed,_ etc. Judging by the man’s blank expression – and how yellow eyes could look blank, Jaskier couldn’t say – it did not translate. “A… spirit?”

“You mean am I dead?” The man asked, and actually scoffed, a wry smile touching his pale lips. “Not as far as I can tell. I would have hoped the afterlife is not as noisy as this.”

“Noisy?” said Jaskier. “I can’t even hear a bird.”

“I could hear one,” muttered the man, “squawking like an idiot.”

“Hah. _Hah_. You have a sense of humour!”

The man drowned the rest of his cup in response, and then picked up the bottle and drank that too.

“Easy now,” said Jaskier, cautious, “that’s not expensive stuff, but it’s potent.”

“I’ll be fine,” said the man, and indeed, he appeared completely unfazed. “It takes more than this to knock me off my feet.”

“Oh, do go on,” as subtly as he could, Jaskier slid his notebook and quill out from his pack, opening it on his knee, “about the manner of things that could knock you off your feet, and the descriptions of the type of people who could do the knocking.”

The stranger stared at him.

“Are you simple?” He asked finally, as if it just occurred to him.

“ _I_ ,” huffed Jaskier, offended, “am a _graduate_ of Oxenfurt _Academy_ , I’ll thank you to know! My music scores were particularly—”

“Oxenfurt,” the man said, and made a face.

“ _No_ ,” said Jaskier, “not you too. My knight of roses _cannot_ also be a critic.”

“Knight of roses?”

“Ah,” opening his notebook to his latest page, Jaskier gestured lamely with the unfinished prose, “a little elaboration, of course. One cannot blame me, given the particular reticence of the subject, but it’s a good as bet as any. Apparently, there have been plenty of you lot sent through here over the years. Although, that begs the question if there are other knights under all this, like you…” Jaskier slowly looked about the yard, “…are there?”

The man blinked at him. “I just woke up,” he said. But then he frowned, and the blank listlessness of his expression gave way to a sudden, hunting shrewdness. “But I’m not a knight.”

Jaskier considered his pale skin, and the many scars, and then the man’s yellow eyes.

“You’re the Witcher,” he breathed.

“And not a very good one, at the moment,” said the man, “given that I fell in so easily.”

“Fell in what?”

“Her spell,” said the man, and the evening chill gave way to a sudden, unnatural cold, so cold Jaskier felt as though he had been dropped fully clothed in a bucket of ice. A wind passed through the surrounding trees, but not a single rose petal moved. “I came here to investigate the manor when people started going missing. Didn’t sound like a wraith, or a normal haunting. I thought maybe some mercenaries had taken the place as a base, elves even. Maybe a Godling. I wasn’t expecting—”

The cold, which had started uncomfortable, became suddenly unbearable. Jaskier gasped and dropped his cup, where it clattered behind him into the empty base of the fountain and shattered into ice.

“Damn,” swore his companion, standing and looking around, “you should go. And don’t come back.”

“What’s happening?” Jaskier asked, jumping to his feet. The cold did not seem to be coming from any one direction, but as if from all around, rushing around them. Frost was clinging to his fingers, and when he glanced at the other man, he saw that he was wavering on his feet, as if sleepy.

“Witcher?” He asked worriedly, reaching out to steady him.

The man seized him first, white fist around the emerald of his sleeve, and stared intently into his eyes, clearly battling some sudden fit of lethargy.

“Bard,” he said slowly, struggling to concentrate.

“Jaskier,” said Jaskier, “I’ve told you twice now.”

The Witcher stumbled in front of him. There was ice on his knees. And as Jaskier watched with horror, thorny vines began appearing about his arms and legs, and red roses began blooming on his skin.

“Jaskier,” said the Witcher numbly, “from Oxenfurt.”

“Yes, yes,” said Jaskier, “come on, let me help you, let’s get you out of here!” He tried dragging the man towards the courtyard gates, but the Witcher’s legs were stuck fast, and roses red and bloody were fast covering him to his knees. His grip on Jaskier’s arm turned bruising.

”Jaskier,” he mumbled, and then, “Don’t come back.”

And the last thing Jaskier remembered, before all turned to darkness once more, was the Witcher’s yellow eyes slowly drooping shut, before he burst entirely into flowers.

***

“Hello,” said Jaskier winningly, leaning over the inn bar to where the innkeep was cleaning some cutlery and glaring at him. “Would you do something for me?”

“You went back to Carterhaugh,” said the innkeep shortly. “I told you not to.”

“No, I didn’t,” said Jaskier.

“Yes, you did.”

“Didn’t.”

“There’s petals in your hair, dear,” said the innkeep’s wife as she passed, brushing some off his shoulders as she went.

“And young Margaret’s brat found you on the road again.” Said the innkeep accusingly. “Do you have some sort of death wish?”

“Quite the opposite,” Jaskier insisted, “I have been seized with the _brilliance_ of life! Adventure, mystery, romance – _this_ is what life is about my good man!” He said, seizing the man’s free hand in his, and then adding – “I have no idea what your name is.”

The innkeep jerked his hand back. “Dobron.” He said, “you’ve been staying here for two weeks and you don’t know my name is Dobron.”

“My mind has been occupied with the greatest story never told,” swore Jaskier, “Dobron, my good man. Tell me _everything_ you know about the Witcher.”

“What Witcher?”

“ _What Witcher_? The one the Duchess sent to Carterhaugh! The one your grandfather saw heading off heroically into the sunset, hair blazing in the sun!”

“I didn’t say anything about a sunset,” Dobron muttered.

“His grandfather is dead,” said his wife suddenly, where she was setting a table for supper, “but his father still lives, down by the miller, the house with the green door. He’ll tell you what you want to know. Never stops talking that man, once you get him started. He would love to have a willing ear, I wager.”

“Bolka,” Dobron said disapprovingly.

“What?” she said, dimpling at Jaskier, “I want to hear the greatest story never told.”

“Bolka,” said Jaskier solemnly, “you are as magnanimous as you are beauteous.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” said Dobron, “go back to Carterhaugh. May the spirits take you and you never darken our doorstep again!”

“If you really want to thank me, write me a song,” said Bolka, but her smile gave way to sudden consternation, as she quickly added – “but _not_ about a rooster.”

***

By the time Jaskier had finished his trip to the miller, eaten, and made his way out into the woods once more, it was already dusk. His mood had taken a turn for the worse. That happened from time to time, and in equal turns frustrated and disturbed him, as he tended to think himself a beacon of inspiration at the best of times and would much rather like to stay that way. But after talking with Dobron’s father and what he knew of the Witcher, he couldn’t help but feel some cloud of misery following his every step. Images of the Witcher’s arrival to town rose unbidden to his mind, the way the old man had described them, made vivid by Jaskier’s overactive imagination. The cabbages thrown; the nightsoil pots upturned as the man led his horse down the sodden street. Dobron’s father had described a rainy day, sludge puddles in the street, limp white hair, and a tired, solemn face. Broad armored shoulders in a travelworn robe. A salvaged apple from the street, half-eaten, passed to his horse as he gently led her to stable.

Jaskier wasn’t always welcomed into towns. Sometimes he was laughed at, sometimes he was mocked. Sometimes he was mistaken for another profession – not entirely misguided, he tended to get a lot of positive audiences when he played at brothels, given that they were usually already inebriated by the time he arrived, and he couldn’t blame the occasional lady or fellow for getting their wires crossed. Sometimes he was challenged to a duel for some poor girl’s honor. Sometimes he was robbed, (sometimes when he was truly desperate, he robbed others).

But he was never truly _hated._

From what Dobron said of the Witcher’s arrival to town that sodden, deplorable night, the villagers were but one rowdy argument away from constructing a pyre and burning him where he stood.

“A-ha,” Dobron’s father had chuckled, baking in the evening sun out in the field behind his house, “but that’s what mutants got, back then. Aren’t many enough now to cause that much of a fuss. Best avoided, best ignored. You hear me?” And he had peered his sallow little eyes over at Jaskier and the petals in his hair and Jaskier had agreed wholeheartedly and hated him with his entire being.

“Best avoided, best ignored,” he huffed now, as he strode back through the woods towards Carterhaugh, trusty lute on his back and a new bottle of wine his hands. “We’ll see about _that_.”

Which was all well and good, but when he came upon the manor gates, he found that they were shut.

“Hello?” Jaskier called, looking about.

He tried he gates, but they were immovable, and as he watched, more roses emerged from the courtyard and wound themselves up the iron stakes, pricking at his hands. He stepped back quickly.

“Manor,” he announced, “Don’t be ridiculous. Let me in.”

The manor did not such thing.

“Right!” Said Jaskier and circled the wall a little until he saw a place in the stone where it had given way to some rubble. It was still some seven feet in height, and choked with flowers, but Jaskier knew what he had to do. There was a damsel – or a Witcher – in distress, and he was determined to help him! Leaving the wine at his feet, he shifted his belonging more comfortably onto his back, and began to climb. The roses tugged on him as he went, prickly vines and thorns catching in his doublet and his laced cuffs, tangling in his hair. But Jaskier was not disheartened.

“I’ll have you know,” he huffed, as he yanked his wrist back from a particularly adamant vine, “that the Countess of Lorn commissioned me _two_ sets of this outfit, so do your worst!”

The roses, to their credit, took up the challenge. They tore and shred at him, and Jaskier had scaled but five feet when his legs and arms were bared to the cold, the skin there dotted red with blood. Not enough to morbidly wound, but certainly enough to sting, so Jaskier did what he always did when he was trying to distract himself from some needless pain – he sang.

“Oh!” He cried, half breathless, “Has anyone seen my cock! He’s mostly pink with a little bit of blue and purple on his head! He stands straight up in the morning – and gives my wife a--!”

A vine snapped underhand, and he fell backwards off the wall, landing to the ground with a solid _thump_. The lute, underneath him, made a horrible splintering noise.

Jaskier, breathing hard, let out a little wheeze.

“Right,” he said.

And then he thought of the Witcher, arriving to town that lonely night, feeding his horse a half-eaten apple as the rain came down about them both, sheltering in the stables for some warmth. The same Witcher, who had looked sadly about him in confusion that first day, and asked Jaskier – “Where’s Roach?”

Was he still under the roses today? He told Jaskier not to return. Told him more than once. But would he still be lying there under the red, waiting for him?

“ _Right_ ,” said Jaskier, setting his jaw, and clambered once more to his feet.

“Right!” He shouted, and charged upon the wall once more, burying his fists into the vine and sticking a leg against the brick.

“Oh, King Willy! He’s gone o’er the raging foam, he’s wooed a wife, and he’s brought her home!”

Up again went Jaskier on the wall, and the roses went with him, tugging and pulling, scratching and biting.

“And he,” panted Jaskier, fist over fist, “has wooed her all, for her long gold hair—” he paused for breath, seeing he was now a meter off the ground, and continuing with vigor, “for her long _white hair_ , but his mother’s wrought them a mighty care. For a wily spell, she’s laid on her—”

When Jaskier threw his hand up next, instead of damp plant-life and brick, it found soft cool flesh, and with a shriek, he let go and fell once more from the wall. This time, he fell hard, and on the remnants of his poor, trusty lute. It released a sad _twang_ at him, as if in commiseration.

For a few long moments, he lay panting on his back, as the sky above him swam blue and red in equal turns. And then, distantly, he heard approaching footsteps. Featherlight, and gentle. The feet of a lady, if Jaskier was to guess – and he was very good at guessing when it came to young ladies – and he turned somewhat dizzily onto his side to see that, indeed, a young woman stood beside him. She was pretty, in a homely sort of way, in a simple linen shift and long dark hair, but her eyes, when she fixed them upon him, were the colour of many…colours.

“You’re very determined,” she said to Jaskier, and her voice was as the crashing of a thousand bells and the singing of a dove.

“I think I’m going to barf,” said Jaskier.

She smiled at him. It was not exactly kind, and suddenly Jaskier’s body felt light and airy, and his head stopped swimming and his body stopped aching, and he felt as well as he had the morning he had arrived to this distant little town.

“Ah,” rolling slowly to his feet, Jaskier took in his torn clothes, and the many scratches and bruises on his skin that were now rapidly fading from view, “I suppose a thank you is in order, miss…”

The woman only smiled at him.

“This is where you tell me your name,” said Jaskier, helpfully. “Also, if you’re a witch and or sorceress, might I compliment you on your great and boundless beauty, as boundless as your generosity, which is depthless, as the sea—”

“Sweet bard,” said the woman sweetly, and a chill went to his very bones. “I am not a witch. Nor am I sorceress. And I will not tell you my name.”

“You won’t?”

It was only then that Jaskier noticed the woman’s teeth, specifically, their shape and length (which were sharp and long), and her ears, with were similarly long and pointed.

“Ah,” said Jaskier. “Should I… not tell you my name?”

“Why would you ask such a thing?” She asked.

“Because” said Jaskier slowly, edging slightly over to his abandoned lute, which lay in many pieces. “My understanding is – that is to say, the stories I heard at the Academy – that’s Oxenfurt – that is, I mean, the _stories_ about --”

“About what?” Sang the woman, eyes dancing with cold amusement.

“About,” Jaskier swallowed thickly, “about fae folk.”

At once the trees about the manor rustled with laughter. The gate shook. The walls shook. The stones and roses and birds and bees and the grass in the ground vibrated with the bellish laughter of many unknowable things. And the woman laughed with them, her mouth wide and red and sharp.

“Ah, piss,” said Jaskier, mostly to himself.

“You are very sweet,” said the woman, “and you need not tell me your name, Jaskier, as you have already spoken it twice in my home, and it belongs to me now, by all accords.”

Jaskier opened his mouth to say _actually the funny thing is that Jaskier is not my real name, you see, because my mother named me Julian and_ – when a noise came from the courtyard beyond the shut gates. It sounded awfully like an annoyed groan. Jaskier shut his mouth again. The woman, too, turned her head towards the noise, and her petite nose crinkled up in a huff.

“Very determined,” she said. “He hasn’t woken for over a hundred years before you came charging in, did you know that?”

“I had inferred,” said Jaskier apologetically, and then, “I’m very sorry?”

“You should be,” said the woman, and then, tilting her head, gazed coolly out over the manor and murmured, “but I liked your songs.”

“Well,” huffed Jaskier, “a commendation from a beauty such as you! I shall carry it with me all the rest of my days, which, by-the-by, I hope to have in abundance?”

When the woman smiled at him again, it was all teeth.

Jaskier swallowed.

“You wanted to see the Witcher again?” She asked sweetly.

“Very much so,” said Jaskier honestly.

“Then I shall give you a test, shall I? If you win, you keep the Witcher. If _I_ win, I keep you both. You see? Either way, you will see your boon again, and it is a beautiful garden, is it not, to wile away the time?”

Jaskier did not, truly, believe that was the half of it. But his lute was broken, there was soil under his nails, and he was speaking to a fae folk about saving an ancient Witcher from a bed of roses, so all things were relative, he figured.

“Very well,” he said. “I will take your test.”

“I was not asking,” she sang, “but I am pleased. Go now to him, and on the morrow, return. When the sun is low, you will play my game.”

Jaskier blinked at her, “I can see him now?”

She flapped a white hand at him. “I am tired and wish to rest. We will have an audience tomorrow, to see your great efforts. A test, for the sweet bard and the Witcher old. Return on the morrow, little sparrow, but remember,” she placed a hand on his shoulder, and Jaskier’s body went frigid with cold, “ _fear him not_.”

***

“You _fucking_ moron,” said the Witcher in greeting, after the gates had groaned inwards and Jaskier had marched victoriously into the courtyard. He was perched on the stone fountain, nude again, and brushing soil and leaves off his arms and legs with annoyance. “You told her your _name_.”

“Nice to see you too!” said Jaskier. “No thankyou? No celebration? No _nice to see you again, Jaskier, savior of my starkly nude be-hind_? They didn’t teach you manners in those Schools?”

“No,” snarled the man, “they taught me to _kill things_. Shall I show you?”

“Rude!” said Jaskier, and then grasping the sad remnants of his lute, shook them at the Witcher accusingly. “I have suffered a cruel loss for your sake! You might do well to show a little gratitude.”

“You’ve done nothing but doom yourself,” said the man, but added more reluctantly, after a moment – “did you bring more wine?”

“Not that you _deserve_ it,” said Jaskier, and joined him at the fountain with the bottle. There were already two cups there, but instead of the simple clay ones Jaskier had brought from the village the day before, they were finely wrought glass of green and gold.

“They’re not enchanted,” said the Witcher, when Jaskier looked at them dubiously, “just annoying. She has a sense of humour.”

“That’s a relief,” lied Jaskier, and poured them both a drink.

When the bottle was empty and they had passed a companionable silence, the Witcher spoke again.

“You gave her your name. It doesn’t matter what happens tomorrow – she won’t let you go.”

Eyeing the carpet of roses around him, Jaskier wisely said nothing.

“Listen,” said the Witcher, after another moment, almost gently, “Don’t come back tomorrow.”

“I’m coming back.” Said Jaskier.

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“I appreciate what I _think_ is your concern,” said Jaskier acidly, “but I’m coming back. Whether you like it or not. Maybe _especially_ because you don’t like it, just to spite you. But I’m coming back. And I’m winning her little game, and I’m taking you—”

He stopped himself short, flushing, and looked down at his empty cup, wishing it were full again. When he looked up at the Witcher, the man’s eyes were gold and tired.

“Jaskier,” he said, not unkindly, “I don’t have a home.”

“You could,” said Jaskier, probably too quickly. “The world has need of Witchers yet, and I,” he hesitated, “I have need of stories. I could write songs about them. About Witchers. About you.”

The Witcher said nothing. He was looking at Jaskier, and his gaze was troubled.

“How old are you, bard?” He asked.

“Don’t be a prick,” said Jaskier.

They fell quiet once more. Dusk was upon them, and the gentle noise of moving leaves alerted them to the roses, which had once more made their path up the Witcher’s pale and scarred ankles to his legs. The Witcher eyed them ambivalently, almost with defeat. Sensing their time was short, Jaskier made up his mind. He stood from the fountain, and the Witcher’s gaze, at first curious, turned bluntly surprised as Jaskier stood pressed against his folded knees. He made no comment but only sat carefully still as Jaskier ran a calloused thumb under his eye, where a scar marked his cheekbone high up, pink under the dusty white of his eyelashes.

“How’d you get that?” Jaskier asked.

“In training,” said the Witcher, “one of my first.”

“It must have been terrifying.”

“I ran into a tree,” the other man admitted, with a wry smile. “Chasing my brothers. Not the heroic tale you were after, I think.”

“I bet the tree was cursed,” said Jaskier, with a smile, and leaned in to kiss him on the mouth.

The Witcher, to Jaskier’s great and endless relief, was immediately responsive, grabbing him hard by the emerald green of his doublet and pulling him close against his bared white skin, teeth sharp against Jaskier’s tongue. Jaskier wondered if he had been conscious those many years under the roses, not knowing how much time had passed, how many people had stepped over him, or where they went to next.

Jaskier wondered how many people had kissed him even before that, when he wandered into towns with his swords and his horse and had cabbage dropped on his head instead of thanks. He would not have thrown cabbages at the Witcher. He would have treated him kindly, treated him warmly.

“Let me treat you kindly,” he said now, and when he pulled, the Witcher stood with him, and when he kissed him, the Witcher kissed him back. When he touched him gently, the Witcher touched him firmly. And when he lay the Witcher down among the roses red, the Witcher rose to meet him.

“I wish my lute were not broken,” admitted Jaskier quietly afterwards, as the dusk came over them and their hard breath mingled in the evening air, “I would sing you a song.”

“Don’t threaten me,” said the Witcher, and it wasn’t until the roses had overcome him and he had disappeared into the ground in a curtain of red, that Jaskier realized he had been smiling.

***

“You’re going to die,” said Dobron flatly, and then to his wife, “Bolka, stop massaging his shoulders.”

“He needs the encouragement!” Said the woman furiously, continuing her ministrations as Jaskier wobbled back and forth on his chair. “He’s a great hero! Or he will be, anyway.”

“If he lives,” said Dobron.

“If I live,” agreed Jaskier.

“ _You’ll live_ ,” said Bolka, then, “drink that ale now, there’s a good lad. You’ve come back from Carterhaugh three times now, that’s three times more than any man before you. And _they_ were knights, you’re just a simple bard!”

“Thank you, Bolka,” said Jaskier flatly. “My confidence overfloweth.”

“That Witcher was confident too,” said Dobron’s father, where he was ensconced by the inn fireplace beneath a mountain of blankets, “look what happened to him.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” said Jaskier again, more coldly.

“Fools,” said Dobron, “fools and martyrs, all.”

“Well,” said Bolka gently, “sometimes the best stories are the ones full of fools.”

“Bolka,” said Jaskier, overcome by a sudden wash of inspiration, “leave _this_ fool. Marry me. I can buy you all the inns you desire. You’ll be a woman of means.”

“And what would your Witcher have to say about that?” She laughed, while Dobron swore behind the bar, and Dobron’s father rocked in his chair by the fireplace and laughed.

***

When Jaskier, dressed and bathed and terrified, approached Carterhaugh the next evening, it was as if a world transformed. He could hear it even from the road, a great swell of conversation and music, laughter and dance. Lights cascaded through the forest, leading him to the gate, which was swung open upon a white marble courtyard. And the people – the people! If Jaskier could call them that – some great and some small, some beautiful and some unnatural, made of tree, made of wood, made of vines and made of flesh. Small child-like creatures with eyes like rolling marbles, women with gleaming bellies and legs like goats, trolls – they could only be trolls! – arguing over vats of wine and berries, unicorns sleeping fitfully in the weeds.

The Witcher would know each and every one of their names, Jaskier was sure. Would know the how’s and the what’s and the how-to-murder-most-efficiently. But Jaskier could only call them beautiful, and terrifying. They milled about in groups cavorting, dancing, and talking. The courtyard was bereft of its roses, and the fountain ran with water almost glowing in its greenness. The manor lights were all on, and music and laughter spilled out from every window. The air smelled sweet and rotten.

And all at once, it stopped.

As Jaskier crept into the courtyard, every inch of movement, every flutter of every wing fell still. On the steps to the manor stood the woman, and she wore a gown of gossamer silk that seemed to come from her flesh itself. Her eyes had become insect-like, and her fingers were long and spindly as a spider’s.

“The bard,” she announced, “has arrived.”

A thousand, thousand eyes turned upon him. Jaskier cleared his throat and adjusted the waist of his doublet.

“Hello,” he said. His voice broke.

A nearby fae child – or what Jaskier sorely hoped was a child - crept up to him and sniffed his leg, and then looked doubtfully back to the woman, unimpressed.

“I know what you mean,” Jaskier told it, sadly.

There was a distant, nervous giggling from the crowd as Jaskier slowly inched his way across the courtyard. A blur of faces and horns and teeth and eyes made a path for him as he circled the fountain and came to a stop at the foot of the manor stairs where the woman waited for him, all smiles. There were roses in her hair.

“Jaskier,” she said sweetly, “you came.”

“I did,” Jaskier said, swallowing, “it would have been… rude of me, not to.”

“I’ve heard that before,” said one of the horned ladies nearby, whom Jaskier believed was a Succubus, and therefore did not think too much about that comment.

“You mean to take my Witcher,” continued the woman seamlessly, “but this is not so simple a task.”

“That may be true,” said Jaskier, “but I mean to do it, all the same.”

An approving murmur swept through the assembled creatures. The woman bared her sweet white teeth.

“You shall try,” she said, and then, “give the bard his Witcher!”

Behind her, the manor gates began to open with a groan, and from the darkness, came a deep, monstrous growl. Jaskier went cold all over. The woman stepped casually aside, as her assembled guests pressed too back from the center of the courtyard towards the stone walls, whispering and laughing and gasping, as an enormous, slavering, white wolf stepped into view.

“What?” said Jaskier.

It was bigger than any wolf Jaskier had ever seen, bigger than any wolf could reasonably grow. Pure white all over, with a raised hackled back, and a wide red mouth wet with saliva, open in a feral snarl. The wolf’s eyes, when they fixed upon Jaskier standing at the foot of the steps, were yellow and hot with blood.

“Oh, shit,” said Jaskier.

The wolf attacked.

If Jaskier was being honest with himself, he expected to die immediately. Maybe the wolf was going to tear out his throat in one fell swoop, chew him limb from limb, and leave his mangled corpse amongst the roses as a warning not to be a fool _and_ a bard, if anything at all. In response, Jaskier simply froze fast on his feet, terror turning his stomach to worms, and was therefore entirely calm with the sense of imminent morbidity when the wolf froze but a step away from him, hair on end like thousands of tiny white fingers. It huffed. Jaskier swallowed. He felt cold sweat run down his spine. His emerald green doublet, fashionably slashed with gold, suddenly felt very stupid and clownish.

The wolf panted hard and sneezed, much like the Witcher had first sneezed when he had emerged from the dirt and the ground that first time, and then Jaskier remembered.

 _Fear him not_ , the woman had warned him. And up on the staircase he saw her watching over the scene with a cool, calculating eye.

“Witcher,” said Jaskier.

The wolf howled and bared its fangs.

Shaking, Jaskier knelt to the ground, and opened his arms wide.

“Witcher,” he continued, with a trembling voice, “I am not afraid of you.”

The wolf stuck out its long red tongue, panting hard.

“I am going to hug you now,” said Jaskier, “and if you kill me, I shall be very upset with you. And this stupid manor will become actually haunted, and then you _will_ be a very bad Witcher, indeed. So,” he swallowed, “don’t do that?”

And gathering the shredded remnants of his courage, Jaskier leaned forward and slung his arms across the wolf’s broad shoulders. Like a coward, he hid his face in the beast’s white pelt so he didn’t have to see its teeth coming, should it actually tear his throat out, but he could feel its breath hot and fast on his back, and his doublet became damp with spit. The wolf, for its part, began to struggle.

“I am _fearing you not_ ,” said Jaskier into a mouthful of fur, holding him all the tighter.

The wolf struggled harder. It began to whine, painfully.

And then it began to change. The shoulders burst from white fur into brown, dense and thick, and it grew in mass and size until the wolf’s pitiful cries turned into the deep windy bellows of a bear. Jaskier fell backwards on the cobblestones at the sudden change, and the bear tottered above him all seven feet in height, roaring blackly into the sky. The assembled crowd jeered and applauded, and up on the stairwell, the fae woman smiled.

“ _Witcher_ ,” Jaskier yelled, angrily, and propelled himself once more into the beast. He could only reach its stomach, so he buried his face once more into the fur and slung his arms as wide as they would go around its back, holding tight to the beast’s flesh. The bear roared and roared, but the deadly claws did not come close to Jaskier, and it only stumbled lightly on its feet as if dismayed, as once again the change overcame him, and Jaskier was holding a lion, a snake, a monster, a slug. He changed and changed and changed and Jaskier held him throughout it all. Sometimes he stumbled, sometimes his grip slipped, but he went back all the same, and when once again the Witcher turned into a great white wolf he grabbed the beast by its ears and fixed their eyes together.

“Witcher,” he panted, damp with sweat and slime and fur and spittle, “I’m _not afraid of you._ And I am taking you _home_.”

The wolf, panting, turned suddenly in Jaskier’s arms into a wide wooden branch.

And promptly burst into flame.

Jaskier screamed. The crowd cheered. The trolls panicked and stumbled drunkenly out of the courtyard back into the woods, while the Succubi danced and the Godlings sang and the army of beastlings the fae woman had assembled watched rapturous as Jaskier struggled. His arms came over his blisters, his hands – his poor, musical hands! – turned red and then black with fire. He would, in all honesty, have released his quarry, but the pain was so sudden and so all-encompassing that it wiped his mind clear of all but a white scream, and he stumbled wildly around the courtyard clearing, white as milk as the branch burned brightly in his arms, roaring like a bonfire.

It was pure accident, when Jaskier stumbled back against the fountain. The fountain he had sung at, laughed at, waited at, for the Witcher to emerge each day from his bed of roses and sit with him awhile. He noticed, almost absently, that there were two cups still on the stone seat, waiting for him. He watched through a haze of pain as they shattered underneath his foot as he careened painfully into the ledge, hands hot with his running blood, and fell backwards ass-over-head into the glowing green water.

At first, he mistook the roar of water for the roar of the fire. And then there was a sudden, blessed silence. Jaskier emerged from the fountain, gasping, the wet and silent branch nothing but dead weight in his blistered palms.

The courtyard was empty, and dark, as if abandoned for a hundred years. No sign was there of its many guests, or of their foods and drinks, their lanterns and laurels. Only the woman was there, standing on the steps, once more dressed in her plain linen dress.

Jaskier, panting and shivering, slowly climbed out of the fountain. He looked helplessly at the branch in his arms. It did not light anew with fire.

“You _are_ determined,” said the woman, and she sounded both proud and disappointed.

“Did I do it?” Gasped Jaskier, shaking all over. “Did I save him?”

In reply, the woman waved her hand, and Jaskier stumbled as instead of a branch his arms were full of the Witcher, similarly drenched and bruised, unconscious and entirely nude. He fell to his knees with the man’s weight and cradled him helplessly in his lap. But the man seemed only asleep, chest rising and falling sweetly, and face eased of pain.

“I’ve had my fun of him,” the woman said blithely, “I’ll find someone new. But get out of here, _Jaskier_ , before I change my mind.”

“Why did you let me try?” Jaskier wondered. “Why did you let me see him at all?”

“Hm,” said the fae, pursing her white lips curiously as she gazed out over the courtyard. Then she slid Jaskier a single smile, whispering, “I liked your song about the cock.”

And with that she faded from view, leaving them alone amongst the rotted stone, with the Witcher’s nude body limp in Jaskier’s arms and Jaskier, with tears in his eyes, grinning from ear to ear.

***

Bolka was pouring out the nightsoil pots from the inn when she noticed two figures coming down the lane. It was Jaskier, as she had hoped and prayed all the night before, but with him stumbled a second figure, tall and broad and pale as milk, with an emerald coat slung victoriously over his shoulders.

“Dobron!” Bolka cried, dropping the pots, and running back towards the building, “Dobron! He did it, the fool did it!”

And she continued crying all the way home, as Dobron and his father came out to watch, and Jaskier clutched the stranger tight against him as they stumbled up the lane from the woods and into town, the stranger doing the best he could to conceal his nudity with the gaudily slashed fabric. Jaskier himself was not in better shape, looking like he had been drowned and mauled in equal parts.

“Bolka,” said Jaskier as he came upon them, bright-eyed and determined, “where can I buy a new lute? I need to start writing, _now_.”

“Fuck off,” panted the man, “get me a bath.”

“ _Witcher_ ,” said Jaskier impatiently, “genius waits for no man! I must write! I must _sing_ , the tale of my Knight of Roses – no, my _Witcher_ of roses, and Carterhaugh, and the fairy queen—”

“She wasn’t a fairy queen,” said the Witcher, confused.

“Should we get him some pants?” Asked Dobron.

“Aye,” said Bolka, “his cock’s out.”

“Pah,” said Jaskier, waving his free hand, “some room of creative ingenuity is expected, Witcher, when writing the _greatest ballad never told_!”

But then, “Oh,” Jaskier said, blinking suddenly as he took in the man within his arms.

“Whatever is your name?”

“Geralt,” said the Witcher, begrudgingly. “Of Rivia. And I would appreciate some pants,” he added to Bolka, who blushingly went to find some.

“ _Geralt_ ,” said Jaskier, like he had tasted something foul.

“What?”

“Why, this is horrible!” The bard announced, staggering behind Dobron as the man led them sullenly into the inn, Geralt careening immediately for the fireplace and taking a heavy seat beside Dobron’s father. The old man looked at him, looked _down_ , and started cackling.

“ _This_ is horrible?” Dobron asked doubtfully, staring at him.

“ _Geralt_ ,” wailed Jaskier, “ _What the hell am I supposed to rhyme with that_?”

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” said Geralt, and slipped quickly, seamlessly, into a blessed sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Arrives to Geraskier fandom 15 minutes late with starbucks and a highly bastardised version of the legend of Tam Lin.  
> \- Recommended listening: "Tam Lin (Child 39)" by Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer.  
> \- Other songs referenced here are "Has Anyone Seen my Cock?" /"The Cockerel Song" and "King Willy"


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